In the ming dynasty, the northern frontier was always the top priority of military defense. The overseer Yushi Meiguozhen once divided the border defense of the Ming Dynasty into three stages.
The first stage is the Hongwu to Jiajing period. Although the situation in the north was unstable at this time, and there was often the pain of conquest, the shortcomings of the tuntian system had not yet been fully exposed, and the soldiers were not afraid of freezing and starving.
The second stage: during the Longqing period to the eighteenth year of the Wanli calendar. The Longqing Peace Conference ended the tense state of war between the Ming Dynasty and Mongolia, and the two sides opened up border cities, and the number and scale of wars were reduced compared with before. Therefore, although the Ningxia sergeants between Longqing and Wanli were cut, they saved the labor of training.
The third stage: Wanli 18 to 20 Wanli. The peace negotiations during the Longqing period lost their role, and the situation on the northern border was not optimistic, but the attitude of the imperial court towards the enemy forces in the north was divided into two factions, one faction was the main peace, and the other was the main battle. As a result, the Ningxia border army must suffer from both taxation and hard training.
As a witness to the Battle of Ningxia, Mei Guozhen summed up the situation on the northern border of the Ming Dynasty very thoroughly. The Ming court's attitude toward the enemy forces in the north was not static, and Ningxia, as a northwestern fortress, assumed the important responsibility of fighting foreign troubles, so the promotion system of its military attaché was also adjusted with the changes in the war situation in the north.
On this basis, I will combine the merit system in the "Great Ming Society" and take the Ningxia Wei Selected Book as an example to summarize the promotion of military attaches mentioned in the selection book, mainly from the four aspects of beheading, conquest, death, and subordinate merit.
One: grappling
The common reasons for rewards in the selection book are mainly military merits, and in all military merits, they are headed by the decapitation of the beheading, as the name suggests, the decapitation is the capture or beheading of the enemy. However, depending on the object of the beheading, the number of meritorious service members, etc., the promotion and reward received are also different.
Ningxia Wei's selected book has many records of military attaches making meritorious deeds, such as: the reward for the slashing merit is better than other merits, which was originally intended to motivate the military attaches and non-commissioned officers to go into battle to kill the enemy, but some military attaches were not in the right mind and risked military merit. By the late Ming Dynasty, the phenomenon of indiscriminate military merit had become more and more serious, and the reward mechanism for slashing and beheading had also exposed great drawbacks.
In view of the above problems, Wanli Twenty Years made a new regulation, which is intended to solve the situation of some military attaches who are greedy for military merit, but from a practical point of view, it may not really solve the problem.
Tao Chengdong's selection in the Ningxia Avant-garde Selection Book records that his ancestor Tao Bin declared the decapitation many times in order to seek a promotion. Tao Chengdong's selection is a very representative military attaché' meritorious selection, and Jiajing's nineteenth year Qianwei Gonggong is second to Jiajing's twenty years and repeatedly declared and was promoted. Such a phenomenon of repeated declarations to risk merit can be found when verifying the selection article, but the record of the military attaché's risk of merit in the selection book is not detailed, mostly such as Cao Yizhong's election article only points out that his father took the risk of attacking, but does not disclose the specific situation.
The record of Cao Shen's attack in the selection article is very vague, and from the selection article, the father's attack has no impact on the children, and it seems that there is no deterrent to only remove the offending position.
Second: conquest
In military warfare, it is not only the capture or beheading of the enemy that can be rewarded, although it is not captured, but it can still be rewarded for heroic performance on the battlefield.
In the selection book, there are often selection articles for promotion without cutting, only recording the time and address of meritorious service, which should be promoted by meritorious service. On the surface, there appears to be no material evidence of this person's merits, but it played a crucial role in the war. As far as the actual situation is concerned, although some problems of beheading have been avoided to a certain extent, some new problems have emerged.
First of all, because there is no physical proof of one's meritorious service, it is more convenient to cheat, and the verification of conquest merit has become the biggest problem. In view of this phenomenon, Cheng Zu had already seen the various drawbacks of the conquest, so he issued many edicts afterwards:
It is guaranteed that as long as the matter of dereliction of duty is truthfully explained, it can not be held responsible, and only corrected to the matter of the original position.
From these two edicts, it can be seen how the military attache's impersonation of conquest merits is rampant. Just by realizing that it is impossible to guarantee the fairness of military merit awards, we have set up a system of surveying and cooperation and a system of discipline officials to slightly curb the rampant phenomenon of risk-taking. However, after Yongle, due to the increasingly serious phenomenon of fraudulent merit and the easier reward for decapitation, the acceptance of conquest merit in the military attaché class gradually decreased.
Third: death
Strictly speaking, the merit of death is also a kind of conquest merit, but the difference with the conquest merit is that the meritorious person himself can no longer enjoy any reward. Therefore, it is generally calculated that the merits of death are counted as the merits of the children.
Generally speaking, most of the military attaches who died in battle were only promoted to one level. During the Hongwu period, it was stipulated that the father was killed in battle, and in order to appease, the children were directly promoted, and later generations generally continued to follow. However, the strength of the award will vary in different cases.
The "Selected Book of Martial Posts" will record the situation more clearly, and Zhu Shuo's selection note will record that he was promoted to the second level due to the death merit, and Wang Jinlu's selection article was directly added to the third level because of the death merit. However, it is not indicated for what reasons the difficulty of the second and third levels of work is added, which is a more neglected point in the compilation of the selected books.
After my examination, these provisions in the "Great Ming Hui Code" explained that the same death merits that existed in the Ningxia Wei Selected Book were also meritorious deeds, but the sealing ranks were different. The first two cases are relatively rare, and there is no selection record in the selected book of Ningxia Wei.
However, according to the fourteen-year example of Chenghua, What Wang Jinlu established should be a miracle merit, which belongs to the combination of conquest merit or capture merit and death merit, and should be promoted to the third level according to the routine. And Zhu Huan was killed in the 20th year of the Wanli Rebellion, which belonged to the civil unrest, not died in the battlefield, as a commander, the official position was higher, and he was actually killed by the rebel party, but he was loyal to the country and had a firm stance, so it was reasonable for the military department to promote him to the second rank.
Fourth: subordinate work
The subordinates lead the troops to fight, and the reward for the leading military attaches after the number of beheadings of the generals is reached. The determination of the merits of the subordinates is related to the size of the conquest.
Unlike the three feats of death, conquest, and beheading, those who have made meritorious contributions to the subordinates generally have higher official positions, mainly military attachés of thousands of households and above, while the above three merits are mainly military attachés with lower positions. As an important figure in leading the expedition, military attaches and generals play a crucial role in the victory or defeat of the war, so the subordinates can greatly mobilize the enthusiasm of high-ranking military attaches.
The "Great Ming Society" has a clear record of how subordinates are promoted, and it also explains why some military attaches can be promoted to five levels by virtue of their subordinates. In addition, according to the various articles in the Ningxia Wei Selection Book, the official positions promoted due to the merits of the subordinates cannot be hereditary, but occasionally there will be some omissions.
For example, in the table, Wu Yun was promoted from the deputy Qianhu to the fifth rank of the deputy Qianhu's subordinates to the command of the bureau, but the position was inherited to his son, which should be an oversight in the review of the military department. When his great-grandson Wu Jilu (Wu Song's son) attacked the post, the military department discovered this problem and changed the official position inherited by Wu Jilu to deputy Qianhu.
Therefore, most of the selection articles in the selection book that have been inherited from the positions of the ancestors who have made meritorious contributions to their descendants are also like Wu Jilu's election articles, which are generally unfinished in the reduction of reform, and some are found when the younger generations inherit the positions, according to the law of subtraction, and some may not be found, but they are not examples of the merits of the subordinates.
epilogue
In the various military attaché selection articles in the "Selected Books of Military Posts", the records of the promotion of military attachés are extremely detailed, and these records provide the most original and accurate first-hand materials for studying the promotion system of military attaches in the Ming Dynasty. Although the health center system is compatible with military, political, agricultural and other aspects, its most important role is still to resist external troubles.
From the above four aspects of the ancient military officer promotion path, on the one hand, it can inspire warriors to make meritorious achievements and defend the country; on the other hand, it is also conducive to the rule of the king, and the selection of talents for the country can be described as killing two birds with one stone.